One could also ask since Lord Raith has the Outsider connection why would they need to infect Justine in the first place?  No, the assumption is that there is a close connection between Lord Raith and Outsiders, it has yet to be proven without a doubt.

Why would it infect Justine at all?  Because Lara mind whammied their old handle on the White Court.  Once he's out of the picture in BR, time to start looking for a new agent.  Hey, that competent aide we saw in WN might work out well.  Lara seems to be leaning on her a bit.  Oh, she's also got connections to that annoying starborn?  Perfect.  Let's get her on the team.

Jokes aside, Papa Raith explicitly has Outsider connections with the HWWB ritual.  It's not an assumption.  I don't think he was infected himself, but there's a good case to be made he was a Black Council member, and Nemesis is working with them anyway.

Why would it narratively take away from Thomas's situation?  The fact that Justine/Nemesis had set him up from the beginning makes his life all the more tragic..  Just think all the sacrifice for nothing,
and unless Justine's brain was totally replaced on the boat when Nemesis admits to deliberately getting pregnant to set Thomas up, Justine didn't love him in that moment, now the question is, did she ever love him?  No, it just makes Thomas a totally tragic figure, lots of narrative value in that..

"Love is a lie" is just not a widely compelling message.  Besides, if Nemesis could have predicted all the dominoes falling into place for it to have gone after Justine from the very beginning, reality should have collapsed a long time ago.  It's too sloppy a storytelling device.

Could be.  Where did we learn about assassination attempts in Twelve Months?  I've been out of the interview loop a bit.

Thomas can't have known for long.  I kinda doubt he knew during their beach run tbh. 

With enough warning time, he'd have gone to Harry (either directly or indirectly; see WN), who has a direct line to Mab and has been known to wall off Nemesis before.  Whether or not a mortal can withstand the treatment is another matter. 

Even taking the likely argument that Thomas doesn't know about Nemesis and its place is the cosmos and Justine is possessed by an all-seeing demon, time would have allowed him to come up with a better plan than to just try to jump Etri and hope for the best. 




I think another interesting question along these lines would be why Nemesis would have given Thomas the mission then at all.  It drives a hard wedge between the White Court and the svartalves, causing tension in the peace talks, but that's almost immediately put aside when Ethniu puts her foot down... literally.  What was the goal with revealing Justine's possession to Thomas then?  To tie up Harry's time?  To what end?  For new divides in the Accords?

Doh I meant Aurora

Ah I should have guessed.  With Aurora, you almost wonder if she even realized she was infected. Then again, that's the kind of act Nemesis might put up for people not in the know like Harry was at the time.

Maeve, and Titania didn't appear overpowered.  They thought they were doing what was right.  Catsith appeared overpowered, as did Justine.  I don't know why some appear to be totally controlled while others are more manipulated rather than brute forced.

Titania? 

I think Nemesis probably has different settings for its hosts.  Active vs passive possession, and possibly others.  Basically varying degrees to which Nemesis has to focus its attention to maintain control.  It used Maeve's jealousy to get her on its side, so it didn't need to exert much if any power there.  Comparatively, Lea and Cat Sith fought against it, and Nemesis had to take a more active role.

I forgot which short story it was but Justine had been captured by the Fomor, and held captive.  She escaped but I'm wondering if it was because she'd been Nemfected, and the escape was faked

Even Hand, the one from Marcone's point of view.

But whether or not he was feeding on her isn't the point.. He couldn't even touch her without getting burned after Blood Rites.  Not sure which book it was or story, but Harry meets them in a bar and is surprised that Thomas has his arm around her, the answer then was a rubber skin suit for her.. Why? When a one night stand with anyone would have solved their problem?

Probably club Zero in TC you're thinking about.  Meh, it wasn't enough of a problem to risk Justine's protection.  They wouldn't have known for sure that it would have come back before they tested it.

Mostly we have speculation, Aurora is a better example, we all agree for the most part that she was infected by Summer Knight.. But how and who?  Speculation, that it was Elaine, but no actual proof or even clues unless you buy she was infected when she fled Justin's house and found refuge at the Summer Court. 

Aurora is an exception as a semi-major character where we don't have a good sense of where or when her infection came from.  It's hard to give clues about when it happened when she was already infected when Harry met her.  If it was Elaine, it'll surely come up when we get to the bottom of her story.

A case can be made that Justine was infected when she was Bianca's prisoner.. Or depending on how far you want to push Nemesis long term planning, she was infected before she got the attention of Lord Raith to be kine for his son, whom he didn't wish well.  Or if you buy that Lord Raith has some connection to the Outsiders, we know from White Night that some of them did, he or one of them may have arranged her infestation thinking long term..

He didn't admit to anything, he said...

Nemesis admitted to a vague period of time.  He's an Outsider, counting time like a mortal isn't his thing.  Could he have been off or lying?  Sure, but it's harder to motivate lying to Harry when Nemesis is planning on killing him imminently.

She became close at the end of Blood Rites because Lara felt she owed her for what she did for Thomas.  Noe Nemesis could have come out as said that, but he didn't, "mortal time is such a vague concept."  What does that mean?  Almost everyone here likes the time travel angle to the story, or a time travel angle.. "Mortal time is such a vague concept," means on his time line, not Harry's time line.. In other words, it isn't something that can be pinned down.

Okay, time travel shenanigans could change things.  Kinda wrecks the speculation game if you go with the assumption that the words on the page tell you nothing, though.  Nemesis answering Harry's question with a general period is Occam's answer.

Yet Justine was busy back stabbing away feeding information to Harry when he needed it.

Are you saying that Justine helping Harry is evidence that Justine was already infected?  I don't follow the line of thought here.